105 



with abdominal drums, which are the noise-producing organs, 

 the females being silent. This fact was known to the ancients, 

 and one of the classic poets says: — 



' Happy the Cicadas' lives, 

 Since they all have voiceless wives.' 

 We have one small species of Cicada in England, confined, I 

 think, to the New Forest, Cicadetta anglica (jiiontana), of which 

 there is a specimen in the case, in company with some huge 

 foreign species. Some Homoptera such as the Aphides and Coccids 

 are familiar garden pests." 



Mr. H, Moore exhibited two drawers of Orthoptera, including 

 European (FAlipodida- (attention was called to those set with closed 

 wings, which showed how the general coloration varied with that 

 of the soil where captured), and some of the larger exotic leaf- 

 crickets, and apterous eastern European camel crickets. 



A box of Xylocopidd' (violet carpenter bees) from various parts 

 of the world. 



Fulgoridw including Fahjora lanternaria, the great lantern-fly 

 of tropical South America, which Madame Merian described as 

 luminous, but this has not been confirmed. 



Foreign insects taken or brought to the exhibitor alive, intro- 

 duced b}^ shipping in merchandise, including Blabera ciibensis 

 Walk., a large cockroach found in a bale of hides from Ceylon ; 

 Achefa biiitaculata, De Geer., taken as it alighted when standing at 

 his own door -in Rotherhithe ; an unidentified leaf-cricket, found 

 in a box of peaches at Covent Garden. 



Acridium icfjyptinm, Linn., a large solitary locust found in a 

 box of mimosa from N. Africa, and which was kept alive for over 

 five months ; Xylocopa vinlacea, Linn., the violet carpenter bee 

 of Europe, found on a ship in the Docks ; Pteronarcys reyalis, 

 Newn., a large semi-aquatic insect, common in Canada, but the 

 specimen exhibited was found on a ship from Archangel, N. 

 Eussia. 



A selection of Orthoptera and Homoptera to illustrate the 

 following note on " Singing Insects." — 



" Quite a considerable number of insects are capable of producing 

 sounds sufficiently distinctive to be attractive to the human ear, 

 and some of them have derived their popular names from the 

 fancied resemblance of their notes to certain words, such as Katy- 

 did, or from direct sound equivalents, such as the cricket, like the 

 cuckoo among birds. In various countries certain of them, 

 chiefly confined to the Orthoptera, are not only captured and 



